Gender Bias in Feedback

Therese Huston: Gender Bias in Feedback + What Women Can Do to Get & Use Effective Feedback

It’s approaching that time of the year here at our company where we submit our annual reviews to our managers and where we give and receive feedback to each other via an internal perspectives tool. In that light, Anna and I thought it would be a good time to bring a podcast about feedback - how bias can show up in that feedback (and how to try and avoid it) as well as how to effectively use that feedback.

And we were excited of course to introduce yet another podcast series to the Ally Podcast Club - previously called “On Her Terms” but now called “Experible” by Krati Mehra. Krati is an incredible host and says of her own show “in this show, we learn from the success and struggles of people we admire and dive deep into concepts that help us expand the possibilities available to us so we can freely, boldly, design the life we desire, discover the depth and breadth of our capabilities, access the wisdom available in the world around us, and even on really bad days, love what we see in the mirror.” We highly recommend you check out more of her show.

Suggested discussion questions (if you need something to start the conversation):

• Does your place of employment have “review season”?

• How does feedback (both formal and informal) happen at your place of employment?

• In light of recent layoffs, especially in the tech industry, do you think that changes how people give and receive feedback?

• Do you feel good at giving feedback? Why or why not?

• Thoughts on how we fight against unconscious bias creeping into our feedback?